The Buzz: The Garden grows in Neenah

New garden center and retail store to open around April

Feb. 7, 2014

The Garden, a new garden center and retail store getting set up in Neenah, will have its soft opening in April. Last fall, as workers began setting up gardens, they put out produce for neighbors to take or buy. Maureen Wallenfang/Post-Crescent Media

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Maureen Wallenfang

Post-Crescent Media

Last summer, when neighbors saw workers fixing up the former Pansy’s, a 75-year-old nursery in a residential area of Neenah, they baked pies and took them over. Workers in turn gave them tomatoes and vegetables, and neighbors returned with jars of homemade salsa.

It’s that kind of neighborliness that’s helping shape a new business called The Garden on that property, 833 E. Cecil St. Ultimately, it will be an organic garden center crossed with a healthy living retail store, but until it gets there it’s a two-acre property with a building under renovation and garden in progress.

“We’re not going to rush it. We want to get a feel for what people want it to be and what the property was like when Enid Pansy had it,” said new owner Jordan Banda.

The Garden will have a soft opening around April 1 to start selling plants and garden supplies and a grand opening during the fall harvest. But it’s likely that it will take years to fully come to fruition with mature gardens and a new place in the neighbors’ hearts.

Banda and his staff will listen to customer requests, including Christmas trees and Halloween pumpkins, but also develop the property into a resource meeting the next generation’s craving for natural and organic methods, tools and products.

“We want to create a lifestyle, the healthy living aspect,” he said. “I think we’re on the cusp of people being more committed to what they put in their bodies. They want to know how and where their food is grown.

“We’ll be hands-on and have classes. It will be family friendly and education focused,” he said, rattling off some of the many ideas they’re exploring. “We want to have farm-to-table events featuring local chefs. There will be a little garden for kids to play in and be in the soil. We want the neighborhood to come in and enjoy the whole property.”

Banda, 26, is a self-made entrepreneur who grew up in Darboy and started a paper recycling business at age 19. He sold that business, bought an Appleton warehouse and started a plastics and pallet recycling firm. With that income, he said he didn’t have to take out loans to get this venture going. He signed a lease-to-own agreement with the property’s bank owner last summer, and since then he and his staff have been making building improvements, learning IntelliGrowth’s worm casting organic fertilizer and tea soak methods, planting an orchard and putting in a rainwater harvesting system.

His fiance and business partner Alexa Aslin is designing the retail shop in the front portion of the building. She’ll stock garden supplies and American-made tools. Banda’s aunts will work in the shop and his mom will take care of the books.

The store will stock additional vegetables, meat and eggs produced using natural and organic methods by Brothertown farmer Wilbur “Barry” Schroeder. Together they’re developing a year-round CSA program.